Major Changes Ahead!

I’ve begun adding all the tool categories and files that BootZilla grabs to the main site. As time goes on, more and more tools will be grabbed and mirrored on BootZilla’s server, to help keep a local repository with proper documentation for each file. This in turn makes BootZilla not only a toolkit, but also a tools website. In turn, development continues on the toolkit and its various scripts. Several changes have been made in the direction this whole project is taking.

Initially, the idea for BootZilla was an easily update-able toolkit that would require the least amount of configuration from the end-user to operate. Earlier versions of the toolkit provided easy to understand documentation for each tool. That’s still the goal, and going forward with the new mirror direction is going to help a whole lot.

The descriptions for the files on this mirror will be scraped together and used in the final build of BootZilla’s documentation. One of the biggest flaws with the current version of BootZilla is the lack of this critical documentation. This new feature will correct this. Not only that, but it will protect against losing some tools that have gone missing from the internet. There’s a handful of these tools that either are no longer available, or completely removed from their respective author’s sites. If this project is to thrive, these types of problems need to be addressed.

One last bit that this will help with is continuity – some files will obviously be updated from the original author’s sites, but others, like Universal Virus Sniffer, which is currently made available through a self-hosted dyndns site will be mirrored to help the author out. I mention this tool in particular, as it’s the first tool to be made fully mirrored on BootZilla.org. The links will be added when the time is right.

As for the next ‘beta’ — It would make more sense to focus on a final release sooner rather than later. As such, the second version of the CMDLet design will have to wait. A lot of work still needs to be done in order for the toolkit to be considered release-quality. A bit of this work was done over the last weekend. ISO-creation will not be a feature this time around, as employing USB drives seems to be the standard means of using this type of toolkit.

BootZilla will include the awesome Easy2Boot toolkit, which supports booting directly from ISO’s, disk images, and various other neat formats. You can dump in practically ANY ISO, ANY disk image, and have it boot without much fuss. It’s what I personally use to boot Windows Installation media on PC’s – and it’s free, too. It’s written by the same people behind the RMPrepUSB format tool, which will be utilized to help create a bootable USB drive, if the user so wishes, with the contents of BootZilla onboard.

Pre-Beta Released!

Today, after basically a month-long hiatus, I’m releasing pre-beta 1. The work in this release was initially considered alpha 4, which was scrapped. Re-development took place over the past month, with several additions to the toolset.

This release includes SyMenu with a pre-release configuration. Additional tweaks will be made to the configuration as tools are added and organized. Some files will be moved around before the final release, as the tools have begun to get a bit disorganized.

Download: http://www.bootzilla.org/wp-content/plugins/download-monitor/download.php?id=20

The final release will be ready before December 1st 2014. That’s a promise I intend on keeping.

Several new tools have been added, including: Norton Power Eraser, Malwarebytes Anti-Rootkit, TeamViewer, TestDisk, HitmanAlert, TempFileCleaner, FRST (and the x64 variant), PC-Decrapifier, BlueScreenView (x64 as well), AVG Remover, Kaspersky Remover, and OldTimersLog Tools. A few other goodies are hidden in the compilation. If you can think of any more tools to be added, leave a comment.

As it is, I feel that this is almost a complete toolkit. Just some final touches are needed, and the rebuild functionality/usb boot functionality need to be created.

A week off… a step forwards and backwards

I took a week off from development, after attempting to re-write the cmdlet template – not once, but twice – and having it be a complete failure.

I’m taking the time now to try and re-organize the template files, clean them up as best I can, implement loops wherever possible, variables and constants, etc.

The next build has the following projected features:

  • BootCD Functionality
  • SyMenu integration

This also means that the next public build will likely be released as Beta 1.

Want more? Leave a comment, suggest a feature, drop me a line –

Crushing bugs and taking names…

Today, I’m happy to release Alpha 3 of the new BootZilla toolkit. As far as I know, there are no known bugs in this release. The issues with ccleaner not properly extracting have been fixed. Several new utilities and applications have been added to the toolkit. It is nearly feature-complete at this point.

The last remaining bits that need some more fleshing out include: boot cd functionality, iso creation/usb img creator-writer, some sort of launcher app, … I’m sure I’m missing something from this list.

Download – http://www.bootzilla.org/wp-content/plugins/download-monitor/download.php?id=19

Addon-pack functionality will be tested in the next version. This may be the last alpha, I don’t know for sure whether or not that’s the case at this point in time, though. I’d like to get this out to as many testers as possible, so the eventual beta releases will be done and out of the way sooner, rather than later.

What is a cmdlet?

Today, I’d like to document the current state of what I’m calling a cmdlet, which is an integral part of the new version of BootZilla’s build process.

First, let me show you the current working template that all cmdlets are based on –

As you can see, I’ve commented the necessary bits and left placeholders in. Each cmdlet is named after the application that it is tied to. This enforces an easy to understand format, allowing additions and deletions to be easily made to the toolset. The main script file, BZBuilder, will loop through all the cmd files in the cmdlets folder automatically, and it will also build a list of found cmdlets in a text file (currently for debugging/logging purposes). You can then easily verify that a script actually executed by looking at the log file. Each cmdlet also has the ability to log a broken download to an error.log file in the cmdlets directory.

Each cmdlet handles every tool separately. This makes it incredibly easy to release patches for the toolkit without having to rewrite a ton of code. In the future, I’d like to make an easy script or application that takes a program name + url + copy or decompress options so that adding or editing tools is a very simple affair. For now, editing the template as needed is good enough for me.

This new system opens up a lot of new functionality that was previously either too clunky or impossible to offer. All using standard NT6 Batch Scripting.

Unfortunately, Windows XP/2003 will not be supported as an OS to build the toolkit on. You will have to use either Windows Vista/7/8/8.1+ to build the toolkit. This is why an ISO and IMG release will be available.

Alpha 1: http://www.bootzilla.org/wp-content/plugins/download-monitor/download.php?id=17

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